Dear World (Magill’s Survey of American Literature, Revised Edition)
At a glance:
- Author: Paula Marie Francis
- First Published: 1984
- Type of Work: Poem
- Genres: Poetry
- Subjects: Mothers, Alienation, Native Americans or American Indians, Multiculturalism, Death or dying, Radiation
“Dear World” is an agonizing eulogy for the living and the dead who have experienced the internal isolation of nonbelonging. Undercurrents of rage and grief score the poem's essence. In her foreword to Jane Caputi's Gossips, Gorgons, and Crones: The Fates of the Earth (1993), Allen explains the context of the poem, which concerns illnesses and death.
Allen once worked for the New Mexico Cancer Control Project, which dismissed discussion of such issues as radiation poisoning and toxic waste in favor of a more publicly acceptable antismoking campaign. Yet in 1976, Allen...
[The entire page is 710 words long]
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